Long time to backup

[RudolfJan]

Hi all,

I just ordered a new computer and so I need to copy my 55Gb TS2013 data. Yesterday I started to make a backup to a network disk. The system is transferring the data over my 1Gbit/s network at a speed of about 100kbyte/s, so using 0.2% of the capacity.

I idea how I can speed it up? It doesn't seem to be a networking problem. Also plenty of processor capacity and RAM.

[alanch]

It's probably a Windows problem -try doing the transfer in a Command window using XCopy, and see if that speeds it up.

[749006]

Would it be easier to just copy to a Portable Drive.
Not reliant on network connections - just USB.

Peter

[RudolfJan]

Thanks for your replies! I finally decided just to be patient. When finished I made a backup of another huge game, 20Gb. This one performed much better at a transfer speed of 29Mbyte/s which is quite reasonable. So my conclusion is that the real problem is in hard disk access time. It doesn't help that TS2013 consists of over 300.000 mostly small files.

So what may help is software with a much faster disk access. No idea if this exists. The idea to use a USB drive I tried in the past, but it doesn't help.

[Juanillo99]

The cause of this slow transfer may also be because Railworks files are highly fragmented. Try defragmenting the Railworks directory. There is a program that, in addition to defrag your entire hard drive, also offers the option to defragment individual directories.
It's called Defraggler, and you can download it here → http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

PS: Defragment periodically the simulator influences an improvement in performance.

[trainsmit]

Many small files on a network disk will be slower than larger files on a local disk. Some of the problem is configuration of diskserver ressources. Fragmentation of the destination disk is also a factor.

When space permits making an archive file locally and then move that, may improve transfer time.

[ttjph]

When space permits making an archive file locally and then move that, may improve transfer time.

I once tried zipping my RW installation using the built-in Windows software. Unfortunately, whilst it seemed fast at first it soon became apparent that it was re-writing the entire .zip file for every file it added... which made it terminally slow before it finished.

Do other file compression utilities manage this better than Windoze?

[alanch]

If you have plenty of storage space, I'd recommend Microsoft Synctoy for backup - once you have backed up the first time which will take some time, Synctoy only looks for differences on subsequent back ups, and so is much faster. No compression, but three options for the type of backup, and you can choose which folders/files to include.

Synctoy is free from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=15155

[ttjph]

One limitation I found when I looked at Synctoy was that it identifies individual USB drives. Since my backup routine consists of three USB sticks in rotation (two in safe storage and one at home waiting for the next backup), this didn't play well.

xcopy and robocopy have options which achieve the same thing, if you like batch files...

[alanch]

One limitation I found when I looked at Synctoy was that it identifies individual USB drives. Since my backup routine consists of three USB sticks in rotation (two in safe storage and one at home waiting for the next backup), this didn't play well.

Couldn't you have just created three backup jobs in Synctoy - one for each drive?